W.Va. dams used to fight Ohio, Miss. river floods

May 5, 2011

CHARLESTON (AP) - The Army Corps of Engineers is holding water in West Virginia's reservoirs in an attempt to prevent flooding from worsening along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Outflows from the reservoirs' dams are expected to be at minimum levels for the next couple of weeks, said Dave Meadows, chief of the corps' Huntington District water resources engineering branch.

Camping, boating and fishing will be affected because the reservoirs are above normal summer levels. Sutton Lake is nearly 7 feet higher than normal and R.D. Bailey Lake is nearly 11 feet higher than normal. Those levels are expected to rise.

Boat launch ramps and campgrounds at several lakes have been closed because of the high water.

"We're going to be experiencing these conditions at all of our West Virginia (flood-control) projects but one, all of our Kentucky projects and some of our Ohio projects," Meadows told The Charleston Gazette. "The only West Virginia project we exempted was Bluestone, where there are dam-stability concerns."

Eric Allen, operator of Summersville Lake Marina, said the business will lose a lot of money because of boat-ramp closures there.

"Even after they do start letting (the water) down, it's going to take some time to get back to normal and for people to get their boats back into the water," Allen told the newspaper.

Meadows said restoring the reservoirs to normal levels will depend on future rainfall and how quickly the Ohio and Mississippi floodwaters recede.

"Frankly, we've never experienced anything like this before," Meadows said.

"We're basing our projections on normal weather and rainfall conditions. If the weather stays rainy or suddenly goes dry, those projections will change."

Storing floodwaters in West Virginia's reservoirs isn't unusual, but it's typically only for a few days, he said.